I agree with your second interpretation, mostly. "Guns and drums" is not to be taken literally. You cannot injure or kill a person with drums! It means "the equipment of war," the army, the military, generally. First, I'll refer you to Wikipedia's article about the song: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_I_Hardly_Knew_Ye Second, I'll just tell you how I've interpreted it myself, in the past. I don't know about other languages. In English it is usually a mistake to try to "make sense" out of song lyrics. Few songs tell coherent stories and are in good, grammatical English. Most do not. The best thing to do with song lyrics is to let them wash over you and experience mood and emotion. To me (ignoring Wikipedia!), the narrator is expressing contempt, anger, and rejection of war, by referring to it as "your guns and drums" rather than in terms of glory and patriotism and sacrifice. "You men, with your guns and drums--now look what has happened." Johnny is her husband or lover. He has returned from the war very badly insured ("the enemy nearly slew ye") He is so badly injured that she has trouble recognizing him as the person she knew and loved. In the United States, it is sometimes sung in a way, and in a context, in which "Johnny, we hardly knew ye" is used to mean "You died too young, we don't know what you might have been if you'd lived." If you look for a recording of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again" you will discover another curiosity. It has the same tune but different words, and the words seem to be optimistic and patriotic ("when Johnny comes marching home again... we'll give him a hearty welcome then... the men will cheer and the boys will shout...") with music which, to modern ears, sounds tragic and depressing.